Yahoo Mail Go brings the Yahoo email experience to Android Go devices

What’s usually your first reaction when you ask for someone’s email address and they produce to say something that ends with @yahoo.com or @yahoo.co.uk (yeah, it used to be fashionable to have one of those 68 years ago)? If you’re like me, it usually takes a couple of seconds to recover from the shock and compose yourself.

Those of us who were active on the internet in the early to mid-2000s, most likely had a Yahoo email address at some point or the other. Either as the only email address or as a complement to a Hotmail account. That was before the novelty of Gmail won our hearts and minds and became the standard. So it is understandable to find a few elements here and there that still cling to and swear by their Yahoo email addresses however compromised they might have been in the last few years.

Just as it is understandable when Yahoo tries to do everything in its power to add more colour and life to its email apps either as a way of consoling these users who have stuck around for so long like Liverpool fans for axing Yahoo Messenger or as a way of keeping up with the times.

The latest update to Yahoo’s email app for Android, an app that I find likeable since it tries and manages to do just about everything that my Gmail app does, brings more colour. However, that is not the news since that update has been out for a while now. The news is the revamp that Yahoo has done to its mailing service’s mobile web interface, mail.yahoo.com. Yahoo calls it “performance-based” and it is not hard to see why since it is built to deliver the same experience as that which users of the app itself get. It has the same colour themes, swipe actions, easy mail organization etc. Basically, making it easy to forego using up the much-needed storage space on your phone for yet another app that you may not be using all the time unless you are one of the holdouts I have described above. This is cool in this day and age of Android Instant Apps.

Even when storage is an issue because of the nature of the device, there might be another way out: using a version of the Yahoo mail that is optimized for devices with little system resources to spare. Devices running Android Go, to be specific.

The app is just 10MB and, reportedly, works just like the main app or the new mobile web experience. According to Android Police, “It works with other email providers such as Gmail and Outlook, supports search and attachments, and has plenty of other neat additions such as customizable swipe actions, themes, people notifications, animated GIFs, and smart understanding for coupons and travel details.”